Georgia Tech’s Moses Wright named ACC player of the year, first from Raleigh
.JPG "Georgia Tech forward Moses Wright (5) hangs from the basket after dunking against Duke during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game Tuesday, March 2, 2021, in Atlanta.")
Moses Wright’s long and improbable journey from junior-high swimmer to the pinnacle of ACC basketball started in a Southeast Raleigh gym that hangs banners to commemorate its honored graduates. Many of the names on the wall at the J.D. Lewis Center are familiar to NBA fans: T.J. Warren, John Wall, Devonte Graham, others.
The summer before his freshman year at Enloe, when Wright first started playing basketball, his mother signed him up with basketball trainer Gawon Hyman, who worked with David West during his long NBA career. David’s brother Dwayne, who runs the powerful Garner Road AAU program, saw Hyman working with Wright on the Lewis Center courts one day.
Wright then was only 6 feet tall, a swimmer and tennis player trying out a new sport. There was very little at that point to suggest he had any basketball future, in high school or otherwise.
“I asked (Hyman), ‘Why are you stealing that lady’s money?’” West said. “I’m dead serious. That’s God’s honest truth. When you see someone doing one-on-ones, you expect to see something. Then he walks in that next summer and he’s 6-5 or 6-6, and I said, ‘Keep training that kid.’ (Hyman) started laughing. Next thing I know, he’s 6-8 and I tell (Wright), ‘We need to have a conversation about something. We’re going to start treating you a little differently.’”
Wright is definitely different. And he’s about to have a banner of his own on the wall at the Lewis Center.
The Georgia Tech senior’s unlikely rise through the basketball world — he played only one year of varsity basketball at Enloe and nearly went to Catawba instead of Georgia Tech — came to an unlikely and triumphant conclusion on Monday when Wright became the first ACC player of the year from Raleigh in the 67-year history of the league.
Third ACC player of the year from the Triangle
It’s almost impossible to underscore how stunning this is, for someone so new to organized basketball to become the best player in a league full of five-star recruits and future NBA stars, to put his name on a list with David Thompson and Michael Jordan, Zion Williamson and Tim Duncan.
Those players don’t just come out of nowhere. Wright did.
“I know everybody I talk to back home is proud of me, my family is proud of me,” Wright said. “It’s just big. Raleigh’s the capital of North Carolina and North Carolina is considered the ‘Hoop State,’ so to bring player of the year back to North Carolina is big.”
Wright is the first player from the Triangle to be named ACC player of the year since Durham’s Warren won it for N.C. State in 2014. Durham’s Rodney Rogers also won the award at Wake Forest in 1993.
Wright, a 6-foot-9 forward, averaged 18.0 points per game and 8.1 rebounds per game for the Yellow Jackets as a senior, becoming the first Georgia Tech player to be named first-team all-ACC in 20 years. He was also named to the league’s all-defensive team and joins Dennis Scott (1990) as the only Georgia Tech players to win the top honor.
“His story is just like crazy,” Georgia Tech guard Jose Alvarado said. “It’s what college sports is about, his story, coming in as a zero-star (recruit). I remember me telling Moses freshman year, ‘If you work hard, you’re going to grow. If you’re in the gym, you can change your life.’”
That Wright was even at Georgia Tech at all was just as unlikely. Wright’s late start meant that he missed the kind of exposure on the recruiting circuit that even mid-level prospects get. Wright, who barely even had a profile on recruiting websites, was close to going to Division II Catawba before then-Georgia Tech assistant Darryl LaBarrie convinced Georgia Tech coach Josh Pastner to step in with a late offer.
“He’s right in the backyard of all these other (ACC) schools, even these other mid-majors, and nobody likes him,” Pastner said. “Am I missing something here? But we took him and thank the Lord we took him. He’s been a stud.”
Wright averaged 3.6 points per game as a sparingly-used freshman at Georgia Tech and 6.7 points as a sophomore before blossoming as a junior. He averaged 13.0 points and 7.0 rebounds last season before breaking out this season. Over the final four games of the regular season, he scored 26, 31, 29 and 17 points to clinch player-of-the-year honors as Georgia Tech clinched the fourth double-bye in this week’s ACC tournament in Greensboro.
‘It’s monumental to have this happen’
The turning point, for Wright, was an ACC tournament game against Notre Dame at the end of his sophomore season, when he scored 25 points in a season-ending loss. He could finally see then the player he would one day become.
“After that, I was like, I can really battle in this league now,” Wright said. “Every day, I was just getting better.”
West, for one, wasn’t surprised it took that long. Wright wasn’t groomed for basketball success, although he did eventually play AAU basketball for Garner Road. When Wright got to Georgia Tech, he was more interested in becoming a chef and opening his own restaurant than playing in the NBA, which now looms before him instead. At one point during his first year, Pastner cleaned out Wright’s locker and left his gear sitting in the hallway.
Wright had to figure it out on his own, by trial and error, while playing in one of the toughest college conferences in the country. He had to grow into it. He had to confound every prediction.
“T.J. (Warren), at 12 and under, we figured was special. We figured that out,” West said. “John Wall, we figured out he was special at 9 and under. Devonte (Graham), we figured he was special as a senior (at Broughton) and then he went to Brewster (Academy) and we knew it. Certain kids, those kids are bred into that situation, and if everything comes together they’ve had the seed and the water and the sun to grow into it. Moses had none of this.
“While he was going through a metamorphosis to become a high-level basketball player, he was also figuring out what that is. People doing AAU basketball since they were 9 years old grow up in that culture. Moses didn’t have that opportunity. He was swimming and playing tennis. It’s monumental to have this happen.”
This story was originally published March 8, 2021 at 9:12 AM.
